Scott and the Romantic Dog

Abstract

Noting the centrality of dogs in Walter Scott's life and novels, this article argues that animal metaphors mark the transgression of the boundary between human and animal. In Guy Mannering, Scott makes a conventional use of animal metaphor when the hierarchy of dog breeds serves as a model for and rationalisation of inequality in human society. In The Black Dwarf, however, Scott questions the project of founding a vision of society on a conception of the natural order. For Scott, dogs provide access to affect and, owing to their connections with memory, help to construct human subjectivity.